


five-finger discount

by jubilantly



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: M/M, set sometime vaguely post s2 finale, they go shopping. that's it that's the fic.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 18:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20698046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: “I do have pockets!”, says Peter, conversationally, delightedly, and promptly turns them out. They are barely big enough to count as pockets, and they do not have anything in them.Juno scowls.





	five-finger discount

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toahappieryear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toahappieryear/gifts).

> Extremely belated birthday fic for Addie, who wanted Jupeter going shopping!

There are things that stop being quite so much of a novelty, that get less frightening and less overwhelming and less, well, new, such as being in space, such as being on a spaceship, such as the general existence of Jet Siquliak, such as working with other people.

Judgement pending, still, on being a criminal, and on whether the way Buddy and Vespa are around each other will ever stop making Juno feel like he has stepped into some alternate universe that his little idiot heart wasn’t made for, but that is what it is.

There are other things that have very definitely not yet stopped being a novelty, and maybe never will.

Such as being around Peter Nureyev.

Getting to see him in all of his moods and all of his modes and all of his idiosyncrasies, getting to work with him again without the end of the world hanging over their heads, getting to see him in his element and being right there with him with no conflicting goals.

Getting to be around him and close to him and _with_ him, getting to see him in ways nobody else does.

Juno thinks maybe the way he looks at Peter is all too obvious, but then, he’s allowed to look at Peter like that, even though Buddy raises an eyebrow, even though Buddy raised an eyebrow at him this very morning sending the two of them out to go shopping in preparation for a job.

They’d barely docked and had that talk with Buddy before Peter pulled Juno out and into a new strange gleaming city, and now here they are and it’s stupidly mundane, at this point, and it’s gloriously mundane, and Juno feels overwhelmed and ridiculous.

At the very least, if he’s ridiculous, Peter is behaving ridiculously.

Which is… not new, at this point.

Peter gets restless, sometimes, between stops on planets or at stations, and Juno would be confused about it, because Peter Nureyev has always run, has always travelled, but they’ve talked about this, as they’ve talked about many things yet still not enough, talked quietly in the dark with their hands touching, their legs entangled, and because they’ve talked about it, Juno knows that it unsettles Peter to be on the ship for such long stretches of time because it unsettles him to be known so constantly.

They’re both a little damaged, more than a little.

So Peter gets restless, and then when they’re planetside, he gets… something else.

Someone else, too, obviously, most of the time, though never too different when he’s around Juno, but still different in a way that’s showing off a little, more dramatic today, flitting through shops in a way that makes him almost more noticeable than the shiny displays around him, though that may just be Juno, and… Juno has forgotten his current alias.

He’s gotten used to saying “Peter”, at the cost of not being able to say any of the fake names rotating through, but usually he at least remembers them, about as well as he remembers his own when he needs one.

Ah well.

It’s a shopping trip, it’ll be fine.

— It is not fine.

Juno loses Peter briefly to a labyrinth of towering nail polish displays and the siren call of glue-on silver beauty marks, and nearly yells the real name across the store when he realizes; he doesn’t, just goes “hey!” in hopes of it working, and it does, but he feels ridiculous once more when Peter returns and looks amused.

“I know you don’t like the fake names, but…”

“I forgot your current one, more like.”

And Peter laughs at him for that.

“Will I ever get you to resort to pet names?”

They’ve had this conversation before like many others, but it is, admittedly, a less serious one, and that’s maybe why they’ve had it so often — the reminder that it’s not all dire and deadly and dealing with past betrayals.

“No,” Juno says.

“But _sweetheart_,” says Peter, “darling, dearest, my love—”

He reaches for Juno’s hand, takes it in his, makes as if to press it against his chest which isn’t less heart-stopping for being mostly drama, not much less overwhelming here and now than it was when he did it a month into travelling together, earnestly, a little warily, did actually put their joined hands to his chest.

Nonetheless, this is not that.

Juno scowls, half-heartedly; pulls Peter closer still by their linked hands and runs his thumb over the soft skin of Peter’s wrist.

Peter smiles at him, and is himself again.

They move through the rest of the store hand in hand, and finally turn to their objective for this trip, which isn’t Juno’s favourite, but buying lipstick is a lot more bearable with Peter, a lot more bearable frankly with Peter turning Juno’s hand over in his and confidently swatching lipsticks, a lot more bearable with the distraction of touch and of Peter looking focused.

Juno watches Peter, watches him try the first, second, fourth colour, feels disgustingly fond.

“Oh, no, absolutely not.” Peter hasn’t even finished swatching the lipstick on Juno’s hand before he puts it away, mouth curling in distaste. “That would make you look dead, at best like you’re about to die.”

“I am usually about to die,” says Juno, with less bite than it would have had a year before, “but yeah, wouldn’t want to run around advertising that.”

Peter looks at him over his glasses, but the corner of his mouth is twitching, and they move on through racks of shiny boxes and tubes and palettes and bottles, looking for who knows what.

Things keep disappearing when Peter walks past them, and he’s good, Juno only notices because he’s expecting it, so it should be fine, and it’s not like Juno isn’t a criminal himself at this point, but.

There is a point that just.

“Okay, where are you putting all of this.”

Peter stops, turns towards Juno even though it brings them very close together, probably because of that. Raises an eyebrow.

“All of what?”

“I’m not angry about the… okay I’m a little, you don’t have to steal this much, what do you want with all of it, but where are you putting it. Not like you have pockets.”

He may have pockets, actually, but if he does they’re empty — there’s absolutely no way he’s got anything hidden on his person, not if he had to hide it while being in plain sight, there is no way, because there is absolutely no spare space in that outfit, or there is, but the space that there is is billowing see-through sleeves, which do not have anything in them.

“I do have pockets!”, says Peter, conversationally, delightedly, and promptly turns them out. They are barely big enough to count as pockets, and they do not have anything in them.

Juno scowls.

But this is, after all, what he signed up for, and they buy only three things and take their bag and go on an escalator system set up around a sculpture of light bulbs and get started on finding what they came for — a dress for Juno.

It’s work, going shopping, in a way that is baffling to Juno, but he does like it, the fabrics and the excitement of putting on something new and beautiful.

He feels guilty about it sometimes in confusing ways, and he really really doesn’t understand the intricacies of buying clothes for a job, but that doesn’t matter so much, in this case.

It’s very easy to get distracted, and he does get distracted, by colors and shapes and shiny things, by imagining himself in one of these dresses by Peter’s side, pulling off some minor impossible thing, ending up back at the ship out of breath and triumphant or slightly bloodied the way they have just once before, collapsing still dressed-up onto the horrible couch Rita bought, laughing, kissing, leaving lipstick marks, fabric getting hopelessly creased.

Juno hasn’t been the one to do the dressing up often, will never be, but he knows that he likes the dressing up part of it.

That’s where Juno’s opinions end, though; Peter knows a lot more, about all of it, and can’t resist the opportunity to use that knowledge.

They walk past some things, Peter makes dissatisfied considering noises, and then he reaches up to feel the fabric of a dress once they’ve gotten to a line-up of things that look like they could be right; reaches up to feel the fabric and hold it delicately between his fingers, and to do so he has to step away from Juno and let go of his hand.

Juno, hands confusingly free, bereft, stands there.

Stands there and puts his hands in the pockets of his coat and.

“Are you kidding me.”

There is a collection of things in his pockets that weren’t there before, small things in shiny-feeling paper boxes, bottles with ornate lids, something heavy for its size that wants to click open, all with logos raised or stamped on them, and Juno knows what these things are, and Juno cannot believe this. Well, he can, but he doesn’t like it. He would very much like to have the strength of character to not kind of like it.

Peter turns around and looks questioningly at him.

“Your goddamn cosmetics haul. In my pockets.”

And Peter grins, unrepentant.

“Whoopsie-daisy,” he says.

He’s obnoxious.

“You’re obnoxious,” Juno says, flatly, trying very hard to say it flatly.

“I was rather under the impression that you’re fond of it. At least a little.”

He is. He is, is the thing. He really really is, he could burst with how much he likes Peter and how much everything he does makes him feel and feel and feel, but a lot of the time he hates having to admit that, because it’s a lot, and it’s too soft, too vulnerable, and still unfamiliar too.

“I’m not fond of the obnoxious,” says Juno, with an inflection that tells him his mouth is going to get him into trouble with what follows, “I’m just fond enough of— hm.”

Peter laughs, steps closer again, puts his fingers through Juno’s belt loops and pulls him in.

“Fond of me?”

“You know I am,” Juno says, immediate, very nearly breathless, and Peter smiles at him.

“Fond enough of me to try on this dress for me?”

“Are you going to steal that too?”

“I would never.”


End file.
